


For Want of a Nail

by Sage (sageness)



Series: DSSS 2012 is coming! [6]
Category: due South
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:06:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/pseuds/Sage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beta readers are made of win!</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Want of a Nail

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Petra for looking this over!

[](http://ds-ssdiscussion.livejournal.com)

 

 

"Augh!" Ray yelled and threw a pencil at the bulletin board across the bullpen. Its point stuck for a second before it fell and clattered to the floor.

"Problems, Vecchio?" Huey was glaring from his desk, eyes bloodshot and a giant stack of files before him. The rest of the bullpen was empty, since it was after eight and even Welsh had gone home.

"Nah, don't worry about it. Sorry," Ray said. "I forgot anyone else was still here."

"No, I need a break from this crap. What are you stuck on?"

"Never mind, it's fine." Ray waved a hand, embarrassed now. He really had thought he was alone.

Huey sat back, cracked his spine, and stood up. "You still working on the Gonzales case or your Due South Seekrit Santa story?"

Ray checked the door of the bullpen. No one was there and Welsh's office was empty. "Yeah, the second thing."

Huey laughed. "Of course you are."

"Hey! I can't get any privacy at home to work on it – not with Frannie nosing in whenever she gets stuck on hers – and I can't work on it during the day here."

"I get it, I get it," Huey said quellingly. "Maybe I can help. Seriously, give me something to think about besides these damned financial records."

Ray sighed. "Okay. Okay, so, I have this whole adventure thing going on in the wilds of Canada and everything. There's a plane crash and the bad guy is hunting the good guys through the forest, but I can't figure out how to get them out of there at the end." 

Huey hummed thoughtfully. "Do they make the arrest?"

"Er, well, no," Ray hedged. "The criminal kind of dies in the process of capture."

Huey snorted. "Sure he does."

"Hey! It makes sense at the time, I promise. I just – they're in the wilderness. How do you get people out of the wilderness?"

"Car?"

"No road."

"Snowmobile?"

"No snow."

"I thought you said this was Canada!"

"They have summer there, too, you know."

"Huh." Huey pondered that a second. "Go figure." Ray snorted, and Huey said, "What about water? Are they on a lake, maybe? Canada has lots of lakes."

Ray pursed his lips. "There could be a river. There is definitely room for a river."

"But not a highway?"

Ray frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, if there's room for a river, why isn't there room for a highway?"

With effort, Ray counted to five and quashed his urge to yell. "Because they're in the wilderness?" he said mildly.

"Which highways can cross," Huey persisted. "I'm just saying that if you need to get them back to civilization, then civilization is going to have to come to them. Right?"

Ray sighed. "They wouldn't know which way the highway was, though."

"Would they know the way to a river?"

"Fraser says you find them downhill. Keep going downhill and eventually you find a river."

Huey hummed again. "That's a good point. So, maybe they can follow the river until they find a bridge, and then they take the road."

Ray blinked. It was only an extra step.

"Or," Huey added, "you could just skip that part and pick up after they get back. I mean, does the particular way they return matter to the story?"

"Huh," Ray said, thinking. "Maybe?" He scratched his head. "They kill the bad guy, accidentally, and then they get out of the wilderness. I thought getting out of the wilderness was kind of the whole point."

"Yeah, okay," Huey said. "On the other hand, maybe it's who they are when they're in the wilderness that's more important, and at the end it's more important for them to keep being those people for a while instead of rushing back to their city-lives."

"Oh, wow." Ray sat back and pondered that for a minute. "That's deep."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Ray said, staring at his draft, "and maybe kind of great." Ray looked up from the page and smiled at Huey. "Thanks, man. That helps a lot."

"No problem," Huey said. "Easier than trying to figure out who Gonzales was paying off here. He's taking payments and making payments and none of it smells right."

"Did you look at money laundering yet?"

Huey shot him a gimlet look. "What have I been doing here for the last six hours?"

"What? This morning it was a bribery case."

"It's a giant mess is what it is."

Ray nodded in sympathy. "That goes for half of what's on my desk. What ever happened to simple cases? One guy pisses another guy off, so he shoots him. Open and shut! I'd be home by now."

"Except for having that story to write," Huey said, grinning.

"Touché, my friend. Touché."

 

Due South Seekrit Santa 2012 has posted its annual [Call for Betas and Cheerleaders](http://ds-ssdiscussion.livejournal.com/77254.html). If you can volunteer to help, please do!


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